Quests hell

[Snugglebutt]

I wish there was an alternative way to get to Ishgard without having to do the main quests.

The only reason for this is that I put most of my focus on crafting and gathering. (I only have one job that is not crafting / gathering.

As a crafter/gatherer myself and someone who has multiple characters so have gone through it more than once, the fact you have to go through the main story including dungeons, trials and such to get into HW zones and towns is a good thing in my opinion. The reason is simply because this gating of the expansion content aka new zones has meant there is literally no RMT town chat spammers or bot armies infesting them. You might come across a cheating player or two but RMT has been kept out pretty much due to them not being able to do all the quests, dungeons and trials for each bot. It's a shame when head back to ARR zones that the bot armies and RMT town chat spammers are still there but at least they are 'only' there and not in HW content/zones undermining us legitimate non-cheating gatherers or spamming our chat when visit HW towns.

I actually think it would be a shame to not continue all new content aka zones and areas from after unlocking Ishgard because no RMT spam/bot armies would infest those either if all new zones/towns were also gated behind the HW content/story unlocking. Things like new classes and such could be unlocked at the start of ARR but I would prefer all new zones/town hubs in future required having to have unlocked HW zones even if didn't complete HW storyline like all the way into 3.2/3.3 or 3.4 story completion to get into them. I think it is a bad idea to add new zones to ARR without having at least got into HW past the current gating because if not behind that gating too they will become infested with bot armies like ARR zones currently are and the new towns infested with RMT chat/shout bots. Any gathering done in those zones without that gating will be almost pointless because of the undermining of the value of the materials gained from them legitimately in competition with those bot armies.